拉普兰上空的极光暴

2023年4月19日

Auroral Storm over Lapland
Image Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (Starry Earth, TWAN)

Explanation: On some nights the sky is the best show in town. On this night, auroras ruled the sky, and the geomagnetic storm that created this colorful sky show originated from an increasingly active Sun. Surprisingly, since the approaching solar CME the day before had missed the Earth, it was not expected that this storm would create auroras. In the foreground, two happily surprised aurora hunters contemplate the amazing and rapidly changing sky. Regardless of forecasts, though, auroras were reported in the night skies of Earth not only in the far north, but as far south as New Mexico, USA. As captured in a wide-angle image above Saariselkä in northern Finnish Lapland, a bright aurora was visible with an unusually high degree of detail, range of colors, and breadth across the sky. The vivid yellow, green, red and purple auroral colors are caused by oxygen and nitrogen atoms high in Earth’s atmosphere reacting to incoming electrons.

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拉普兰上空的极光暴
影像提供与版权: Juan Carlos Casado (Starry Earth, TWAN)

说明: 在某些夜晚，天空有城里最精采的戏码。例如此影像记录的这个夜晚，极光布满整个天空，而创造出这场七彩缤纷天空秀的磁暴，其源头则是日益活跃的太阳。这是一场出乎意表的极光活动，因为在前一天迎面而来的日冕物质抛射刚和地球擦身而过，所以万没想到这个磁暴会触发极光。在前景里，两个惊讶但颇为快乐的极光猎手，正凝视着令人惊奇且快速变化的天空。不管预测怎么说，在地球的夜空中，不仅在遥远的北方，连在在美国最南的新墨西哥州都曾有极光出没。在这幅呈现芬兰拉普兰北部Saariselkä上空的广角影像里，所见到的明亮极光，其细致程度、色彩范围和在天空分布的广度都异于寻常。鲜明的黄、绿、红和紫色极光之色彩，是因地球大气高层的氧和氮原子受到入射电子的激发所致。